Final Cut Pro

02

I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon and write a blog post about FCPX.

I’m not going to do it.

I’m not.

Crap, I am, aren’t I?

Fine. You win.

You win this round. But the war still rages!

I first sat down with Final Cut Pro in 2001. I was in my school’s visual broadcasting program at the time, and they upgraded their tape – to – tape editing suite to a Quicksilver Power Mac G4 and FCP 2.5.

I hated it. Coming from an iMovie background, Final Cut was hard to use and incomprehensible. I followed some of the included tutorials, but they were way out of my league. For most of the year, I ignored it.

Next year, in a new program with a new teacher, I dove headfirst into the program. I learned straight from the manual this time, teaching myself page by page. By the end of the year, I had purchased a copy for myself. I loved it. For the past ten years, Final Cut has been my reason to own a Mac.

There’s been a huge backlash to Final Cut X. I’m not going to get into the specifics here, because it’s been so well outlined in other posts. I mean, just reading the comments in the App Store is…well, an adventure.

Ron Dawson has a very interesting post on the new program. You should really read it (because it’s well thought out and executed) but in a nutshell, he believes that Apple is targeting photographers with FCPX. Since all these new fangled DSLR’s do a pretty good job at video, they’re assuming that photogs will be eager to try their hand at some non – linear editing of their own.

And I think he’s right. Spot on.

But his post got me thinking about DSLR’s in general. I’d like to draw some comparisons if I may, and you can tag along if you want.

Let’s say FCPX is like my Canon 7D. For a photographer, it’s a great option. For a filmmaker, it’s sorely lacking some critical features, like stabilization, follow focus, a viewfinder, XLR inputs etc. Luckily, other companies make solutions for these products. In some cases, they do a better job than Canon themselves would.

Take Zacuto. Want a viewfinder adapter? You’re almost certainly going to buy a Z – Finder. Could Canon or Nikon make a similar product? Sure. Would it be as good? Probably not, because they’re a camera company, not a camera accessories company.

I think the same holds true with FCPX. We’re doing it already. Want powerful color correcting software? You’re probably using Colorista. Think of the filmmakers you know who denoise with Neat Video or Magic Bullet DeNoiser or sync tracks with PluralEyes. We buy add ons to make the software do what we want, the way we want.

That’s the way I see the new Final Cut. It’s like the body of a camera. You can build on it, customize it, and make it your personal editing machine. Granted, this won’t happen until the developers can get their hands dirty in it, but when they can, we’ll be seeing an impressive editing platform that is designed to edit just like you.

Pictured: Final Cut Pro X

The reality of the lower price point of FCPX is this: it’s cheaper because it has less features. And you’ll need to spend more to add on those features. So now it’s up to you: Do you buy an editing suite that has all the features you use and more that you don’t right out of the box (I’m looking at you Premiere)? Or do you buy a bare bones – customizable suite and add only what you need and use?